No Congress, No Coherence—the Left’s Post-Trump Identity Crisis

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I’ve mentioned in other videos that there’s been a poverty among the Democratic Party of constructive criticism, alternate agendas to President Donald Trump.

In other words, without power in the Congress or the White House or the Supreme Court, they’ve turned to theatrics or performance art, street violence, the Teslas, cutting videos with potty-mouth senators, profanity, trying to disrupt Congress, keying Teslas, threatening people. This huge 1,400 protest—I shouldn’t say they’re huge, they were actually quite small. You know, “Hands Off.”

It’s kind of funny. I see these people in their late 60s and early 70s, mostly white people, and they seem to have the same signs, the same agenda, and they leave at the same time. They kind of look like my baby boomer group. And I always think back when I was at UC Santa Cruz in 1971 and I see these people. I said, “I would think you were the people that I went to school with. And you were doing that when you were 18, 19, and 20, and you haven’t changed. You’ve learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”

And in any case, my point is, why don’t they offer a constructive—I don’t know—alternative? Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is seen in all these videos of 30 years ago where she gives a very coherent argument why China is taking us to the cleaners and they’re destroying American jobs and they’re sucking out investment dollars out of the United States.

Why doesn’t she just say, “I kind of agree with Donald Trump. Go back—or, better yet, he stole my ideas. I was there first”? Or maybe Trump can say, “I wanna hire you, Nancy. And can I rent that video? It’s impressive.”

How about Paul Krugman, The New York Times former economist writer, Nobel Prize winner? He wrote and he says, “I don’t think that mercantilism is that bad at all.” He wrote about protectionism all the time. Why doesn’t he come out of the woodwork and say, “You know what, President Trump, I have about 10 columns about why we need tariffs and mercantilism. Here it is. Copy it”?

Warren Buffett kind of, you know, got on his hind legs when people suggested that he hadn’t come out clearly enough against Donald Trump’s so-called trade war. But in 2003, in one of his letters, you remember what he wrote? That this was unsustainable. 2003. Not with the $1 trillion trade deficit. Fifty consecutive years we’ve run deficits. No, no. He said in 2003 it was a dangerous idea.

So, why don’t people aggregate that left-wing or liberal feeling and then say, “Mr. Trump, you stole our ideas about protecting American industry. And now, you haven’t implemented them well. So, we’ve got some—you know—we’re not gonna do kickbox videos anymore. We’re not going to say ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ type, will somebody not relieve me of this guy?”—you know, that’s what they’re doing with Elon Musk when they call him an illegal alien—“We have constructive agendas. One of them.” And then tell us what it is.

Maybe it’s the debt doesn’t matter. We’ll have zero interest rates, like we’ve had. And you don’t have to pay $3 billion a year in interest because you’ll just print money and there’s no interest. Or that’s insane. Or maybe they’ll look at the trade deficit and say, “Well, we’re very wealthy and trade deficits are good. We offer another alternative. Maybe we’ll get more of them because, apparently, all these countries with high gross domestic product are wrong. India, China, EU—they’re making big mistakes by having surplus. We love deficits. And that’s your problem, Mr. Trump, you need bigger deficits.”

Just give us some concrete counterproposal. Sen. Cory Booker talked, D-N.J., talked for 25 hours. Could not he have said, 30 seconds, “We have a $1.7 trillion annual deficit that is contributing to a $37 trillion national debt, which is reaching 130% of GDP. And I, Sen. Cory Booker, potential presidential nominee and candidate in 2028, have this proposal, how to end that trade deficit, but especially this budget deficit. And here it is”? Just give us 20 minutes of your 25 hours.

No, they haven’t done any of it.

And so, when they wonder why the Harvard/Harris Poll or other polls don’t show Trump dropping—besides the fact that his constituency, it parallels the 50%, who only own 1% of the market capitalization of Wall Street—they look for alternatives. And they see nothing but street theater.

Maybe they think that’s going to win them the midterms. Traditionally, historically, they may be right. But for now, there’s just Donald Trump’s proposal and everybody who’s blasting, blasting, blasting them and no constructive alternative.

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